Little is known of Behn's early life, not even her maiden name (which may have been Amis, Johnson, or Cooper). She probably did spend a few months in Surinam in her twenties, as she claimed in her novella Oroonoko (1688), presumably because her father had some kind of appointment there. On her return to England she probably married a man named Behn, for even hostile contemporaries did not question her marriage; but he seems to have died soon afterward (perhaps in 1665), since he is not mentioned in any records of her life. The suppositions that he was Dutch and a merchant seem to be based simply on inferences from satiric butts in her plays. The first definite records, state correspondence of 1666, show Behn acting as a spy in Antwerp during the Second Dutch War. Like many Crown employees, she could not get paid; she returned to London penniless and was actually imprisoned for debt. She wrote pathetic letters to government officials, including Thomas Killigrew, who was also manager of the Theatre Royal on Bridges Street, one of the two licensed theaters.
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